World lead secures Heptathlon title for Clay

2005 World Decathlon champion Bryan Clay (USA) had absolutely no problem in the last event of the Heptathlon 1000m, and grabbed his first major indoor championships win with a total of 6371 points, a personal best and world leading mark this season. Clay finished the 1000m race as the last of the remaining six competitors in 2:55.64.

Clay, who competed for Azusa Pacific during his college years, finally took the World Indoors gold after two silvers in 2004 and 2006. The American also won one outdoor gold in Decathlon at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki.

The series during two days was impressive with four event wins and a season’s best in five. Clay won the 60m in 6.71s, just 0.06s off personal best and then long jumped 7.75m just missing his personal best by 3cm. In Shot Put he set a personal best 16.21m and then cleared 2.09m in High Jump, just 1cm off his PB. He started the second day with a 7.86m 60m hurdles win in a race where other competitors were deeply affected by false starts, again only 0.09s off PB. A 5.00m Pole Vault was the only minor glitch in the series and 2:55.64 1000m was just a formality.

22-year-old Belarussian Andrei Krauchanka held his second place in the last event to grab his first major championships medal at the senior level. He had won the World Junior Championships in 2004, European Junior in 2005 and European U23 Champs in 2007. The Young talent set a national record with a total of 6234 points adding five points to his own record set this season. His best event was the Pole Vault where he added a huge 40cm to his indoor best. Krauchanka ran 1000m in 2:46.49 to easily hold off a challenge from Dmitriy Karpov (KAZ).

Karpov, who had been the co-world leader with Krauchanka before this competition, added a first indoor medal to his tally, a bronze. Karpov has earlier got bronze medals from two World Championships in 2003 and 2007 and an Olympic bronze as well in 2004. Karpov scored a total of 6131 points falling back a bit in first day events, but had a personal best in Pole Vault with a 5.20m result during day two.

Mikhail Logvinenko (RUS) was 4th with 5984p, Donovan Kilmartin (USA) 5th with 5951p and Andres Raja (EST) 6th with 5894p. It was the first World Indoor Championships for all three. Roman Sebrle (CZE), who had won a medal in each of his five previous World Indoors and Aleksandr Pogorelov (RUS), who had been 6th three times before at the World Indoor Championships, could not finish the competition.